How Long Has This Been Going On (21 page)

"First for me."

Pause. Is something supposed to happen now?

"Well, okay," goes Frank, his body rearing to chug. "See you tomorrow."

"Sure thing."

Frank takes off down the path. Because of his days in Vice, he knows the park so well he could map it, and he decides to favor the culs-de-sac this afternoon. Larken says, "I don't see why the whole thing has to take place in the Black Forest." So what does he want instead? A dance hall! Two guys doing a fox-trot, right? Who'd lead?

Frank walks on, grinning inside himself about Jake, when he comes upon Something Deep. One of those outgoing blond guys, tall and bosomy. An overgrown Eagle Scout leaning against a tree, his eyes parked on Frank.

"Hey," says Frank.

"Hey, yourself."

"You look happy."

"I'm okay."

"What else?"

"Oh... a little hungry, maybe."

It's quirky how fast you invent patter, falling into this new world. "What are you hungry for?" says Frank, pulling his arms back in a body stretch to emphasize the gym chest. "You tell me." Odd answer.

"Just what do you like to do?" Frank asks.

"Whatever you like. Give me an idea what you got in mind."

Frank looks at the guy. Something's not working.

"You want to do me?" the guy asks.

Frank just looks at him.

"You want to blow my tool?" the guy asks.

"No."

"No? How come?" "You're a cop," says Frank.

"No kidding," says the guy, his expression now changed to disgust. "I just left the force. I worked Vice, too." "So what are you doing
here?"

"Force of habit?" Frank joked.

"Jonesy!" the guy calls out. "My partner," he tells Frank.

Fat Jonesy looms up from the usual nowhere.

"Hook 'em up," says the blond.

"Pleasure," says Jonesy, coming forward.

"Hey, look," says Frank, backing away. "I'm a cop. I know the drill. You don't have anything on me."

"We'll have cuffs on you for starters."

"Fairies in the park!" a high-pitched voice chants from somewhere deep in the trees. "Fairies in the park!"

Frank, still backing off, says, "This is false arrest. You'll never make it stick."

"Don't give me lip, asshole," says Jonesy, having a spot of trouble freeing the cuffs and starting to breathe hard at the exertion. He is really obese, well past the weight limit set by the L.A.P.D.

"You're not a cop," says Frank, as the high-pitched voice sails out from the distance again. "You're a fat horror." "Fairies in the park! All the cops are fairies!"

"Hey,
fuck you,
somebody," the blond shouts.

"Jonesy," says Frank, "you're letting your partner steer you into a bad—"

Everybody ducks as a good-sized rock thunks against a tree about three inches from the blond's head.

"Shit!"

"Blond cops are fairy cops! Fairy cops hate fairies!"

A second voice chimes in with "Who's the fairy
now,
cops?" and both join in for a chorus of this, over and over.

"That's it!" the blond cries, stalking off toward the singing.

Jonesy has the cuffs out at last, but Frank backs around behind a tree, timing it to the blond's passage: Four seconds more, three... and as the blond disappears from sight, Frank suckers Jonesy with a right feint and a hard slam with the left. Frank grabs Jonesy's baton and gives him a good one for luck, throws the guy's gun into the trees, and runs. He's in his car, he's on the road, he's at Larken's door—it's twenty minutes later but in his mind he's still running—and he's banging on that door like a refugee.

When the door opened, Frank leaped inside and grabbed on, saying, "Hold me, just hold me."

"Who are you?
Unhand
me!"

Frank took a look. It wasn't Larken.

"Lark?" Frank called out.

The toilet flushed and Larken appeared. "Frank!"

"Who
is
this, Larky?" the stranger asked.

"'Larky'?
I
invented that," said Frank.

Smiling nervously, Larken said, "If you'd kept up with me the way you promised, you'd know what's going on in my—"

"We're on the phone all the time!"

"About the
business.
Then you always jump off."

"So this is Frank," said the stranger. "I'm Hudson."

"What the fuck kind of name is that?" said Frank, trying to look taller.

"Wait till you hear the rest of it," said Larken. "Hudson's my new boy friend. Would everyone please sit down?"

"Boy, you moved fast," said Frank.

"What was I supposed to do, take the veil? At least he looks like you."

"Not that much," said Hudson.

"You mean," said Frank, "I get
replaced?"

"Complimented is how I'd put it."

"I thought you were just going to... be here," said Frank. "That was dumb of me. And selfish." Frank sat on the couch, then jumped up, pulling a wet towel up after him. "Damn it, Lark! You've always got something in the wrong place here!"

"I've been meaning to mention that," Hudson began—but Frank was already through the door—for he had thought of something he had needed to do for a long time, and had best do it now.

His father. Frank was thinking about the two cops, reckoning that only the most vindictive man would try to seek him out through the precincts of L.A., even assuming that he bought Frank's story. The blond seemed like the kind who gets really dedicated to his personal causes, okay; but it was Jonesy whom Frank flattened and disarmed. Taking a cop's weapon is about the worst thing you could do to him short of castration. Okay, it
is
castration. But Jonesy looked too fat to pursue it.

Still, if it came to looking through the precincts for Frank, it would help to have his father in on it. No one has ever figured out how a false arrest against a resisting arrest is supposed to play if the guy who's getting arrested is a cop himself...
was
... but it was dollars to donuts that any Chief would throw it out on the spot. Cops just don't lock up cops.

When Frank moved into his apartment in West Hollywood, he formally returned to his father the key to the house he had grown up in. Now, on Frank's visits, his father had to let him in.

"Rootie Kazootie's
on," said his father at the door.

"Oh yeah?"

"Poison Zoomack's trying to steal Polka Dottie's polka dots," his father went on, the way you'd say, "Eisenhower's telling that egghead Stevenson where to get off."

Visiting Frank's father nowadays meant plonking down in the den and waiting till he tired of the doings on the tiny television and finally started talking. Visits also meant not commenting on the slovenly way Frank's father was dressing now, or on the booze he lapped up straight out of the bottle.

"Dad," said Frank once
Rootie Kazootie
had ended, "we have to talk, okay?"

"That's my boy, Frank," said his father, rubbing Frank's shoulder. "Next is cartoons."

"Dad, we just saw cartoons."

The bottle again. "That was puppets."

Frank got up and turned off the television.

"Dad, I want to talk to you. I'm in trouble."

"You'll work it out, Frank. No male of the Hubbard name has ever failed to square up."

"I brained a cop, I ran from an arrest, and I fuck men up the ass."

"Not in uniform, I hope, Frank?"

"Dad, look at me, will you? I got into trouble in Griffith Park this afternoon. I may need your help, and I need you to listen to me just once in your whole life, will you, please?"

Frank's father stopped drinking and looked at Frank.

"Will you?"

Another swig out of the bottle.

"Yeah, keep drinking," said Frank, "and don't listen."

"I always enjoy having you over here, son."

"Do you know what a homosexual is, Dad?"

"Sure. Your Uncle Felix."

"Huh?"

"Sang on the radio. You recall. 'Softly Within the Morning Sunrise' and such. High notes, like opera. Of course, we didn't call it 'homosexual.' We called it 'faggot,' or 'fairy.' We'd say a guy like that is some fucking worthless fairy brown-ass and he deserves the worst he got. He'd get it, too, most often."

"There was someone calling out stuff like that today," Frank mused. "About fairies in the park, and the fairies are coming."

"They're always somewhere."

Big swig this time.
Real
big taste of the whiskey.

"They're sitting next to you, Dad. They're in your house."

"Yeah," said Frank's father, wiping his mouth, wiping it all away.

"Mother's dead and I'm a fairy and you're watching cartoon shows. That's your life."

"Right, Frank."

"I can't figure out what reason anyone had for shouting in the park when I was about to be arrested. I'd have been all hooked up and down at the station being booked but for that. It was another bad arrest, too. Just like... Dad, do you realize how many major things happen by accident? I mean, even if it looks as if they were interconnected, they're just a series of mistakes. They're just..."

Frank's father was looking right at Frank, but Frank got up and switched the television back on.

"Thanks for your help, Dad," said Frank, on his way out.

"She was a saint, just remember that. A fucking
saint,
bless her immortal memory."

The Kid called Derek Archer long-distance from New York, where the act had had a great success. Derek was not doing so well. He was drinking, and kept babbling about someone killed in Griffith Park, his throat slashed, so terrible, another homo going out the way they all go out.

The Kid said, "Derek, what do you mean
they
all go out? Who do you think
you
are?" "Oh, don't,
don't
chastise me," Derek answered. "I'm falling apart."

"Derek, you're drunk."

"A bit... something like..."

"Damn. You won't hear a word I say now. Do they at least have a suspect in this park murder?"

"Police baffled, citizenry apprehensive."

"It was probably the police who killed him."

"Johnny, really!"

"Derek, have you ever been stopped by a cop? Do you have any idea what kind of power they wield?"

"...Johnny boy..."

"You're sloshed."

"I want to go out. I want to visit the Y."

"If that's what you want," said the Kid, "do it."

"No, Johnny."

"Don't play games."

"The guy in the park, Johnny. The police call it pure robbery, but it was the gay section of—"

"I've got to go, Derek. Anything I should bring you from New York?"

"Some spotlight," Derek cried.

He really was drunk. He staggered around his apartment, wondering and singing. Gesturing. Dramatizing. Head bobbing and knees sinking.

He's considering, What have I to lose? When I had a career and an income and property, I had something to protect. I had a
name.

Fumbling with his 78s, Derek upends an album, and a few discs fall onto the floor. Swaying, he stares at them. They don't seem to be damaged, but he can't quite reach them. They keep slithering away and giggling. Derek wanted to play Doris Day's "Papa, Won't You Dance With Me?" but maybe this isn't even the right album.

When Derek's agent bid him farewell, he assured him that Derek would always find
some
work. "It may not be a lead, or Metro, or even anything you'll be proud of," the agent said. "But you won't starve."

That's
good
to know, Derek thinks, fussing with the records. I won't go hungry—except for the perilous clarity of the Beauty Palace known as the Y.M.C.A. Oh, why do they build places like that if not to delight the eye and savage one's resistance? I have so tried—so and so and so and
so
very much tried—to free myself of this humiliating need. I have sat around a Saturday-afternoon pool rampant with handsome boys; and I played it so smooth, scarcely looking. I have watched colleagues pressure toothsome and impressionable newcomers into bed for a role, a test, even a
single wordof dialogue
in a mob scene; and I knew that was wrong and never tried it myself.

But I cannot stand back from the Beauty Palace when my life is caving in. There is no reason to save myself now.

The phone rang, and Derek made a helpless sign with his left hand. Ridiculous. Nobody makes calls to a loser in
this
town.

The phone kept ringing, so Derek made his way to it, crunching a few records as he passed.

"Yes?"

"Derek, it's Johnny again. You'd better talk to me and stop drinking so much."

"Johnny. You're so kind to call me back. So kind."

"Cut it out, Derek. Sober up."

"I can't find the music I need. The Doris Day—"

"Damn you, Derek!"

"—a Columbia red label..."

Derek grabbed at another album, and all twelve 78s tumbled onto the floor.

"Derek, listen to me.
Derek!"

"Yes, Johnny."

"You're supposed to be the father figure, and here I am taking care of you!"

"Such a fine boy, my Johnny. The only one who became my friend. You like me even when I can't give you... I can't..."

"This is hopeless. Look. I'll be back there in four weeks. Don't do anything foolish while I'm gone."

"...never foolish, Johnny..."

"Derek, will you
please!
We can get you into shape again, if you'll—"

"Johnny, won't you dance with me," Derek sang. "Please dance with me—

"Derek, you birdbrain!"

"Oh, dance with—"

"Get a pencil or something. Hear me? Do it now!"

"Johnny—"

"Get a pencil!"

About a minute of bumping and falling noises followed, then the Kid heard Derek's voice again.

"Okay," said the Kid. "Now write—and do it neatly, so you can read it tomorrow when you're back among the living. Write 'What do I want from life? What are my priorities? Is it work? Is it love? Is it fantasy?'"

"...'What do I..."'

"Derek, you asshole! You're going to break the rules and throw it all away!"